Winners! Red Dot Books & Readers Cup 2015-2016

Another cycle of the Red Dot Book Awards and the Readers Cup competition is over.  This is our 7th year!

With over 5,000 votes cast from 11 different international schools, the Singapore-wide book award 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place winners in the four categories are:

Early Years

• 1st place:  Polar Bear's Underwear
  
• 2nd place:  Pig the Pug
  
• 3rd place:  You Are (Not) Small
  

Younger Readers

• 1st place:  Pigsticks and Harold and the Incredible Journey
  
• 2nd place:  Quinny and Hopper
  
• 3rd place:  Samurai vs. Ninja: The Battle for the Golden Egg
  

Older Readers

• 1st place:  Wild Boy
  
• 2nd place:  Masterminds
  
• 3rd place:  The Fastest Boy in the World

Mature Readers

• 1st place:  The Martian
  
• 2nd place:  The Truth Commission
• 3rd place:  A Time to Dance

Note that each school also has its own winners -- and participating schools are given those results to advertise as they will.

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Last Thursday the Canadian International School - Lakeside hosted the Readers Cup competition, where teams from different schools compete in three categories -- Younger, Older, and Mature -- with questions based on a subset of this year's Red Dot books.

The Readers Cup winners were:

• Younger:
• 1st - Dulwich Team 2
• 2nd - NPS Team 1
• 3rd - SAS Team 1
• Older 
• 1st - CIS TK 1
• 2nd - SAS 1
• 3rd - CIS Lakeside 2
•  Mature:
• 1st - GESS
• 2nd - UWCSEA Dover
• 3rd - CIS Lakeside

Students could also submit book cover creations and book trailers to be judged.  Click here to see all the entries.

The Book Cover winners were:

• Younger Readers - Dulwich : Senan Lynch
• Older Readers - Lycee Francais : Antoine Mauger
• Mature Readers - SAS : Sneha Mukherjee

The Book Trailer winners were:

• Younger Readers - Nexus : Isla & Oliver
• Older Readers - SAS : Sidney Ford
• Mature Readers - SAIS : Aditya Rao

254 students from 14 schools in 46 teams participated in the Readers Cup.  Congratulations to all! And many thanks to all our members who organized it.

Besides medals and trophies, individual prizes included a year's subscription to Epic Books, an online ebook library for children, as well as (physical) book tokens from A Closet Full of Books, the children's literature specialist book vendor here in Singapore run by Denise Tan, who attended the competition and handed out the prizes. 

Books worth $3k are also donated to charity in honor of each of the three 1st place teams in the book quiz.  The three winning teams will be notified early next year as to which local charity their $1000 worth of books from A Closetful of Books has been donated to and they will be given the opportunity for a photo session with the recipients.

Changes to the Red Dot voting and Readers Cup this year

This year voting for the Red Dot books is for 2 months, not one week.

The online form will be on the website -- reddotawards.com -- starting from March 1st and closing on May 1st.

Remember: each school can collect votes in their own way.  You can direct your students to the Red Dot website - or create your own vote catchers.  You then report your results to me -- and I will email you back a total for your school, including any submitted online.  The overall winner for the whole network will be announced on the website and here.

Our search for the 2015-2016 Red Dot shortlist titles will begin much earlier.  The goal is to announce the lists in early June.  How to suggest titles (besides sending us an email!) will be explained in the near future.

There are even more changes happening on the Readers Cup front.  After last year's event, several of the participating librarians had extended conversations about how to improve it and make it more than just quick regurgitation of memorized information.

Consequently the Readers Cup Committee met in October 2015 with the express purpose of updating the format of the event in order to:

• allow for a greater number of students to participate
• promote higher level thinking/reading skills
• promote creativity
• allow students interaction across schools
• have more winners

After much discussion it was agreed schools can enter up to TWO teams per category, rather than just ONE.

In terms of the quiz, besides short answers on key plot points and multiple choice questions, there will be:

• kid generated questions
• inferential/deeper meaning questions
• questions based on supplementary information provided by the Committee 4 weeks before the competition (e.g.,  about the author, the country of the author, etc.)

 There will also be other ways to win -- in addition to the quiz portion:

• Best Book Trailer - prepared and submitted by schools ahead of time, shown in between rounds. Each trailer no more than 1 minute long. Marked out of 10
• Best Alternate Book Cover - prepared and submitted by schools ahead of time

Having a mixed team quiz is still under consideration, where students from different schools would be mixed together.

Watch this blog -- and the Red Dot website Readers Cup page (link here) -- for ongoing updates.

Contact Barb Reid, the chair of the Readers Cup committee, if you have questions about Readers Cup -- bre@uwcsea.edu.sg.

Contact Katie Day, the chair of the Red Dot committee, if you have questions about the Red Dot awards -- kda@uwcsea.edu.sg

Back after the long break -- and a Red Dot update

Those of us on the northern hemisphere academic schedule are slowly starting up again after the long break.

We look forward to seeing each other at our upcoming meeting, Wednesday, Sept. 10th in the Primary Library at the German European School (GESS), 300 Jalan Jurong Kechil, Singapore, 598668 -- 4:00 pm for a 4:30 pm start.  An agenda will be forthcoming, via the Google Group.

Ranita Smart, our host, says while parking is available, no one is allowed to drive into the campus between 4:00-4:20 pm, as the school buses leave at that time -- so plan to arrive before or after that 20-minute window, if you are driving.

There should be several new faces in the crowd.  Not only do we have a few new schools (e.g., GEMS World Academy and Dulwich College), but also the replacements of our former colleagues, e.g., at the Canadian school (Lisa and Isabel), the German school (Ruth), Eton House (Carla), OFS (Jeroen), UWCSEA East (Debbie), SAS (John Johnson), etc. 

NB:  New school librarians in Singapore:  you as an individual are free to attend our general meetings.  Just come along.  The benefits of having your school join as a paying member are outlined here -- and relate to professional development opportunities that we provide.   We do recommend you join our Google Group in order to receive email updates re meetings and blog updates.  The only requirement is that you sign up with a valid Google Account email.

Re Red Dots:  New people should read the write-up I did of the history and evolution of the Red Dot Book Awards (here).  All schools are encouraged to participate every year.  And all ISLN members are welcome to be on the committee which sets the 8 titles for each of the 4 categories of readers.  Read the May blog post on the longlists here. 

I notice that only 3 of us have signed up to be on the Red Dot committee so far.  Link to Google Doc here.  I'm going to consider this document open for the next week -- and then we will try to settle subcommittee meeting times for Early/Young Readers and Older/Mature Readers before the Sept. 10th meeting.  We have to get going on it.

The goal is to announce the sets of Red Dot titles by the end of September -- and it's always a stretch, time-wise.  October is a no-go month for our network -- because of differing holiday schedules -- so sometimes we don't manage it until the end of October. Yet we know schools need to be ordering the books -- as the voting takes place in early March.

The Readers Cup competition (which is based on a subset of the Red Dot titles) takes place in late May.  We will be asking for a new committee to organize this at the Sept. 10th general meeting.  After last year's event, there were several discussions about how to improve it -- both in content and organization.  I feel if we are going to introduce changes, people need to know by our November meeting.  So if you are interested in the organization of the Readers Cup, be prepared to raise your hand in September!

Looking forward to seeing you all on Sept. 10th -- and to seeing my Red Dot Committee spreadsheet fill up a bit.

Readers Cup Winners 2014!

The annual Readers Cup competition was well-attended and enjoyed by everyone on Thursday, May 22, at the Canadian International School - Lakeside.

This year we experimented with running the three competitions simultaneously, in order to keep the time frame between 4 and 6 pm -- and it worked very well, with everyone together in the auditorium for the opening remarks, and then at the end for the announcement of the winners in each category.

And the winners were:

Younger Readers category:

1st place:  Singapore American School (SAS)
2nd place:  Stamford American International School (SAIS)
3rd place:  Canadian International School -- Tanjong Katong (CIS-TK)

Older Readers category:

1st place:  Singapore American School (SAS)
2nd place:  Stamford American International School (SAIS)
3rd place:  United World College of Southeast Asia (UWCSEA) - East

Mature Readers category:

1st place:  United World College of Southeast Asia (UWCSEA) - Dover
2nd place:  St. Joseph's Institution - International (SJII)
3rd place:  Australian International School (AIS)

Congratulations to the winners -- and to all the participants!

Each winning team member in each category received a personal book coupon for $20 and the winning schools in each category received a book coupon worth $1,000 -- all from the sponsor of this event, Bookaburra Books, represented by the owner, Cheryle Hum.

In case you're interested, here are the questions and answers used in the three categories -- as well as the Multiple Choice quizzes for each.

• Younger Readers:  
• Multiple Choice:  Questions -- and -- Questions & Answers
• Slideshow, including Questions and Questions & Answers
• Older Readers:  
• Multiple Choice:  Questions -- and -- Questions & Answers
• Slideshow, including Questions and Questions & Answers
• Mature Readers:  
• Multiple Choice:  Questions -- and -- Questions & Answers
• Slideshow, including Questions and Questions & Answers

Many thanks to Lisa Patton, Head of Libraries at Canadian International School - Lakeside, and her colleagues for all their work in hosting the event -- and to all the people who volunteered to be judges.  Thanks also to the support of our ISLN network members who participated and ran teams this year.

Red Dot / Readers Cup update

The Readers Cup competition will be held Thursday, May 22, 2014, at the Canadian International School, Lakeside campus.

The list of books won't be announced until Red Dot voting is finished on March 12th -- as only 5 out of the 8 books in a category are used for questions.  This is to encourage reading of ALL the Red Dot titles, not just the ones in the competition.

See the Readers Cup page on the website for more info.

If you are interested in being part of the working group developing questions for Readers Cup, contact Katie Day (kda@uwcsea.edu.sg).

Red Dot voting starts in less than a month!  From Wednesday March 5 through Wednesday March 12.

Hope your schools are enjoying the Red Dot books....

Did you see how two of our Older Reader titles won awards from the recent American Library Association (ALA)?

• Flora & Ulysses by Kate DiCamillo won the Newbery, and Doll Bones by Holly Black won a Newbery Honor

Readers Cup: Sample Questions & Posters Available

Sample questions for all the books (5-10 each) are ready, in Google spreadsheet form.  Have your students create their own in the same vein for prep purposes.

Click here for the links.

SJII also made some posters to help everyone advertise the event.

Click here for download links.

Readers Cup -- update

All the information about the Readers Cup competition is on the Red Dot website -- www.reddotawards.com -- however, there is a bug when viewing the site (a Google Site) using Internet Explorer.  Recent edits aren't showing up (as SJI International learned today -- when their IE screenshots didn't match mine (taken using Chrome and Firefox)).

Two important links are therefore repeated here:

Sample Questions -- Google Doc
(separate sheets in the spreadsheet for the three categories)

Team Registration Form

Date:  Thursday, May 24th
Time:  Arrive at 3:30 pm for a 4:00 pm start
Location: Auditorium in Block A, UWCSEA East, Tampines campus  (click here for a Google Map)

Questions?  Email Linda Twitchett or Debbie Diaz

And the Red Dot winners are....

With 14 schools participating in the voting and over 7,000 votes cast in total, the winners for the Red Dot Book Awards in Singapore as a whole are:

Early Years

Younger Readers

Older Readers

Mature Readers

The voting results for individual schools were tallied in a Google Doc and the link was sent to those librarians involved.  If you didn't get an email from me and you had students who voted, drop me a line (kda@uwcsea.edu.sg).

The Readers Cup competition will be held on May 10, 2012, at UWCSEA East (Tampines campus).

Titles (a subset of the shortlists for Younger, Older, and Mature readers) for the Readers Cup event will be announced within the next few days (as we know you're all anxious to start working).

What about next year's Red Dot shortlists?  Well, we've already set up Goodreads Listopia lists to collect suggestions.  And our goal is to collect and consider these long lists by June -- and announce the shortlists BEFORE the June/July break.  So you can be reading over the summer.

NB:  To put a book on the suggestion list, you do have to have a Goodreads account.

Click below to access each of the lists -- and add whatever books you want.  I've populated the lists -- to start with -- with books from the Panda Book Awards (the China equivalent of the Red Dot awards) and the Sakura Medal (the Japanese equivalent).  Books should have been published in English in 2009, 2010, 2011, or 2012.

• Early Readers 2013 - LONG LIST
• Younger Readers 2013 - LONG LIST
• Older Readers 2013 - LONG LIST
• Mature Readers 2013 - LONG LIST

Anyone interested in being on the Red Dot subcommittee -- i.e., the people who will look at the longlists and pick 8 per category, looking for a balance of type, national bias/source, etc. -- just drop me a line (kda@uwcsea.edu.sg).

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